DANE COUNTY EAS - CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS

  1. Primary EAS Origination

NOAA Weather Radio (NWR) will serve as Dane County’s primary entry point to the local EAS. The National Weather Service Forecast Office at Milwaukee/Sullivan operates three NWR stations that serve Dane County, WXJ-87 in Madison (162.55 MHz), WWG-90 in Janesville (162.500 MHz), and KHA-47 in Baraboo (162.450 MHz). At the request of County Activation Point officials, the National Weather service will originate EAS and Tone Alert messages simultaneously over all three of these stations. In Dane County, the Activation Point is the Dane County Public Safety Communications (911) Center, with Dane County Emergency Management acting as back-up.

This arrangement allows local access to the “All-Hazards” warning capabilities of NWR and also provides an EAS input to broadcasters and cable operators through a well established, 24-hour, year-around source. By monitoring the local NWR source, broadcasters will receive local EAS messages as well as the weather warnings normally issued by the National Weather Service. Additional information on NOAA Weather Radio as an EAS source can be found in the Wisconsin State EAS Plan.

The EAS will be used only as an initial source of warning information. Periodic rebroadcast of warnings and follow-up information will also be carried by NWR at the request of local officials. These messages will be a part of the normal program stream and will not be broadcast as EAS or Tone Alert messages.

Figure 1 on page4 shows EAS paths to broadcast stations and the public.

  1. Back-up EAS Origination

As a backup to the weather alert system, a county activation point can request origination of a local EAS message by the South area local primary stations. Radio stations WIBA-AM/FM serve as the Local Primary Station (LP-1) for the EAS Local Area. Radio station WOLX-FM serves as the Alternate Local Primary Station (LP-2).

Figure 2 on page 4 shows the back-up EAS path.

  1. Event Codes

The Dane County EAS has a number of event codes available for use. The local event codes are:

X / ID / Product Type / X / ID / Product Type
ADR / Administrative Message / LEW / Law Enforcement Warning
CDW / Civil Danger Warning / LAE / Local Area Emergency
CEM / Civil Emergency Message / NUW / Nuclear Power Plant Warning
EVI / Evacuation Immediate / RHW / Radiological Hazard Warning
FRW / Fire Warning / SPW / Shelter In Place Warning
HMW / Hazardous Materials Warning / TOE / Telephone Outage Emergency
  1. Guidance for Participating Local Broadcasters and Cable Operators

Participation in the Dane County local EAS requires that NWR WXJ-87 be monitored as an EAS source. If the station is already monitoring WXJ-87, then only a minor reprogramming of EAS gear is necessary. Filters should be set up to retransmit messages that meet the following criteria:

Location Code:055025

Event Code:See above

Originator Code:CIV (NWS considers origination over NOAA Weather Radio as a relay for civil authorities.)

EAS (Origination by a local primary station)

  1. Message Text – Primary Source

The text of all EAS alerts issued by the National Weather Service is disseminated via the NOAA Weather Wire Service (NWWS), the AP and UPI news wire services, and the Emergency Managers Weather Information Network (EMWIN). The text of Civil Emergency Messages originated by the NWS will also be carried by these services. The text received from one of these networks can serve as a text source to be reread on air at timed intervals or to be entered into a character generator for television text crawl.

Initial EAS alerts will include the phrase “CIVIL EMERGENCY MESSAGE” on the Mass News Disseminator (MND) Product Type line and the phrase “BULLETIN – EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED” on the MND broadcast instruction line of the NWWS text.

Follow-up information and updates will also be disseminated via these same networks. Messages subsequent to the initial alert will bear the phrase “CIVIL EMERGENCY MESSAGE” on the MND Product Type line. Depending on the urgency of the situation, the MND Broadcast Instruction line will include either the phrase “BULLETIN – IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED” or “URGENT – IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED.”

“BULLETIN” will be used when the information is sufficiently urgent to warrant breaking in to a normal broadcast.

“URGENT” will be used when the information may wait until a stop-set to be broadcast.

A Note to Broadcast Stations:

The text of EAS and follow-up messages will be originated by the National Weather Service with the NOAA Weather Wire Service (NWWS) as the original means of dissemination. The AP and UPI news wire services will carry these messages, however, they will still appear as originated by NWS. As a result, depending on filtering at the station, these messages may appear in the weather office as opposed to the newsroom. Station staff should review their filtering process to ensure that when the text of a CEM does arrive, it can be quickly retrieved and acted on as appropriate.

Regardless of the filtering setup, receipt of an EAS alert should serve as the initial notification that the text of the message will be available via the station’s weather wire or news wire source.

Figure 3 on page 5 shows the text path.

  1. Message Text – Secondary Source

The County Activation Point will fax the text of the initial alert and any subsequent messages to all broadcast stations and groups on the Emergency Media Contact List contained in the plan. This will be done only as time allows and sound not be considered as the primary source of the message text.

  1. Testing

Dane County will initiate month tests of the system at approximately 12:05 on the first Wednesday. These tests are intended to be as thorough as possible without disrupting station operations or actually activating the EAS. Tests will include:

  1. Message transmission procedures from the Activation Point to NWS.
  2. NWS coding of the test message for NWR and NWWS dissemination.
  3. News wire service retransmission of test message text.
  4. Broadcast station retrieval of test message text.

Test messages will include a pre-scripted text with the phrases, “CIVIL EMERGENCY MESSAGE” on the MND Product Type line and “HOLD, DO NOT BROADCAST AT THIS TIME” on the MND Broadcast Instruction line.

Local Emergency System - EAS Paths


EAS and Follow-up Message Text Paths

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